This invention relates to outdoor, camping, sporting and military equipment, and is in particular directed to military and/or civilian survival devices. More specifically, the invention is directed to a spark-generating device in which a steel strike plate contacts a flint rod member to generate sparks which can be used to ignite flammable material for starting a fire.
Emergency fire starters are typically included as equipment for many civilian and military occupations, as well as for recreational outdoor use. In its simplest form, a steel strike plate member is struck against a flint member, e.g., a flint rod, to produce sparks. The sparks can be used to ignite a finely divided flammable material, which can then be used to light a fire on available flammable materials, e.g., fire wood.
Currently many fire starters employ a flint-and-steel strike principle to start a flame. One common survival tool uses a flint-steel rod mounted within a block of magnesium. The principle of operation behind such a device is to allow the user first to scratch off small flakes of magnesium metal onto fire-starting tinder, and then ignite the magnesium with sparks from the flint-steel. In practice, it is very difficult to hit the tiny scratched-off flakes of magnesium with the shower of sparks obtained by scratching the flint-steel rod. Moreover, in the windy conditions that are often found in a survival setting, this task becomes virtually impossible. In state-of-art fire-starting devices there is insufficient magnesium (if any) in the flint rod to generate sparks hot enough to actually light the tinder material on their own. Hence, in this prior art fire-starter, it is necessary for the user to carry a block of magnesium—to obtain the magnesium flakes or pieces that can be used to ignite the tinder. In an ideal fire starter, the flint rod should provide ignited particles that are able to ignite the tinder without having to provide additional particles of magnesium or other spark-ignitable material. However, nothing suitable has yet been proposed in this field.
In addition, the flints used in the current mode of fire starters are highly susceptible to corrosion and/or deterioration from environmental factors, which limits their utility as a survival tool. Fire-starting rods are typically composed of a mixture of rare earth elements (e.g., cerium, lanthanum, praseodymium, and other elements from that family) in combination with iron and/or iron oxide. The elements normally used in the many different compositions of fire-starting flint rods have high standard reduction potentials and have a great tendency to give up their valence electrons. Also, several of these elements—cerium and lanthanum, for example—not only oxidize very easily but decompose in water (and corrode rapidly in warm water). Under conditions where an electrolyte or reagent is present (such as a salt water environment) a flint rod will completely disintegrate within 24 hours. There have been many occasions in which persons needing to use their fire starters have gone to retrieve it, but found only dust in their back packs where their fire starters had been stored. Also, the rods of many types of fire starters (such as the type that has a flint-steel rod mounted on a magnesium block) will react violently when immersed in salt water producing heat and hydrogen gas. This is hardly a desirable attribute, considering that a wet or marine environment is the very type of environment where a survival tool of this type may be needed, especially for emergency responders and military personnel. A fire starter using any type of flint-steel that is not completely sealed from the elements (especially water) is not a practical survival tool in the real world. While it would seem that the problem could be solved simply by making the tool in a fashion to seal up the vulnerable flint rod to protect it from moisture, this simple solution has to date, in fact, completely escaped the survival tool industry.
With regard to the electric version of the fire starter, such as the fire starter described in application Ser. No. 12/070,741, the composition of the anode and cathode portions of the device must have different standard reduction potentials. The elements normally used in fire starting flint rods are excellent electron donors due to their very high standard reduction potential values, with their natural tendency to lose electrons. In the future, the power needed to run small electrical devices will become lower and lower and make devices such as this more and more practical. The electric version of the fire starter can easily produce voltages from 1.5 to 3 volts along with enough current to power low powered devices. The larger the difference between the standard reduction potentials of the parts that actually make up the device, the more voltage the device will produce. However, this construction also makes the device more susceptible to corrosion and damage from water and other electrolytes in the environment, which may come into contact with the flint rod.
The term “mischmetal” is understood in the art to be an alloy of rare earth elements, namely those of the lanthanum series with atomic numbers from 57 to 71, and these typically include cerium, lanthanum, and minor amounts of neodymium and praseodymium, as well as trace amounts of other elements in the series. Mischmetal has been used as a component of lighter flints, but in that case it has been blended with iron, iron oxide and magnesium oxide to form a harder material, known as “ferrocerium”, as the cerium mischmetal would be too soft on its own to form sparks. The small amount of sparks available from the ferrocerium mischmetal flints makes them suitable for butane-based cigarette lighters, but not for survival tools for emergency use.